2013: Josh's Tonsillectomy

I took Josh to the Outpatient Surgery Center by 6:50 a.m. to have his tonsils removed. It was very well done. We waited only about 1 hour during which time we answered the nurse's questions and put Josh in a hospital gown with fishes on it. This hour gave Josh time to relax and warm up to them. They let him choose some trinket toys to hold. When they were ready for him in the surgery suite, they sent me to the couches to wait and gave him a ride on the hospital gurney. In the surgery suite, they loosely held a mask to his face to put him out then started the IV and proceeded to surgery. When he woke up, I was sitting next to his bed in the recovery department. The nurses were on hand to quickly bring him some morphine. He threw up a few times as expected to get rid of the old blood that he swallowed during surgery. They keep the children for 2 hours afterward or one movie length to watch for uncontrolled bleeding. Josh watched the movie Robots.

(One of my favorite parts in the beginning is when the father robot is running home while telling everyone along the way that he is going to be a father. The mother robot says to the daddy robot as he bursts through the front door, "Oh you just missed the delivery!" and you see the delivery truck driving off through the window. "But that's okay! MAKING the baby is the fun part." Then you see them sitting down with the instructions and assembling a baby robot. It's a funny computer animated cartoon with Robin Williams playing a voice. I like his humor.)

They saved Josh's tonsils in a specimen cup for me to look at. It was a little gross even for me probably because it was personal. I'm sure that most parents look through the opaque walls of the container but I had to open it up and shake them around and take a picture of them. I could identify the parts that were visible in Josh's mouth before removal and they were attached to the tissue root which color and texture looked like raw beef. The tonsils were even more enormous than I realized. Each tonsil with the tissue root was about the size of my thumb. Poor kid. His throat is still swollen but there is a noticeable difference in how he forms his sounds now. We had him sing the ABC's to us so that we could hear the difference. I think he will talk a little easier now and will still benefit from speech therapy for a little while.

Britton stayed home from school coughing. So I had all 3 boys. All went smooth until the anesthesia wore off. The trick seems to be keeping the kid drinking constantly so that he keeps the tonsil sockets cold and moist. The doctor prescribed him liquid vicodin which does not smell or taste good but he has been a very obedient kid with the exception of midnight when he woke up crying and it took me an hour and a half to convince him to drink cold liquids and take some more pain medication. I only spent about 15 of those minutes trying to coerce him into drinking ice water. Then he was trying to lay down to sleep again so I let him and laid a rice pack (cloth pocket full of rice out of the freezer) against his throat. He slept almost an hour then woke up crying again. So I repeated the treatment with a slightly different tactic.

I used the medicine syringe to squirt ice water down the inside of his cheek towards his tonsils while holding him and trying to soothe and explain nicely as he was struggling. I gave up after a few good squirts not wanting him to cry too much. As I was in the kitchen wondering what to do next because I did not want to wake up every hour, he came in willing to take the medicine and drink liquids. He took it so nicely finally then slept from 1:30 a.m. until about 7:00 a.m. when I was preparing the other kids for school. Darren woke up during the night from the commotion so after getting Josh to sleep, I laid with Darren in Nikki's bed but it was a little crowded with the 3 of us in a full sized bed so I returned to my bed about 3 a.m.. Jonny's alarm went off about 4:30 a.m. and then I got up at 6:30 a.m. I was so grateful that my cousin Patti texted this morning offering to pick up my kids for school.

After 24 hours of liquid only, I prepared Josh some cold, pea-sized scrambled eggs. I think we'll make it through the week, but I've decided to turn off my phone ringer and only answer my cell phone. I'm exhausted and probably shouldn't speak to anybody in my current state of fatigue. Poor Jonny probably didn't get much sleep last night either. We moved Josh into Jay's bed nearest our bedroom but really I should have slept with him in his room on the other side of the house and let Jonny sleep. He's entering the busiest time of the year where he works very early to very late Monday thru Friday and sometimes Saturdays.